Hotel Brasil
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
According to the police, the victim was stabbed in the heart before the head was separated from the body. As the investigation continues other hotel clients are decapitated, usually with the head found delicately balanced on the knees of the sitting victim. A witty, touching account of life at the edge of Brazilian society, dressed up as a murder mystery.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in a dilapidated Rio de Janeiro hotel, Betto's first novel reads like a satire of an English country house mystery, as interpreted by Pedro Alm dovar. When the head of one of the hotel residents, an aging gemstone trader, turns up in a hallway with both eyes removed, the police summon bookish C ndido, who devotes much of his spare time to helping Rio's orphaned street kids, for interrogation. Other suspects at the hotel include Diamante Negro, a flamboyant, cross-dressing transformista; Madame Lar ncia, a retired prostitute turned pimp; and Rosaura dos Santos, who dreams of becoming a telenovela star. Betto, a liberation theologian and former political prisoner, provides the backstories for each of these characters and more, at times at the expense of narrative pace. Of course, the crime solving matters less than the book's revealing look at the marginalized underbelly of Brazilian society.
